The observations of our galaxy throughout history have told us that our Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light years across. A number confirmed time and time again by scientists with better and better instruments. But recently a team from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, USA, published a paper challenged that idea, saying the galaxy is much bigger, up to 150,000 light years in diameter. They used the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s (SDSS) data to look at the distribution of stars outward from the centre of the galaxy, in reference the the galactic plane. They discovered that the stellar distributions oscillated...
A lovely photo of the soyuz capsule was snapped over Kazakhstan at sunrise this past Thursday. On board were Expedition 42 commander Barry Wilmore of NASA and Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency, returning to Earth after a 6 months stay on the International Space Station.
After feeling an electrical surge in the drilling instrument last month, the Curiosity rover has once again picked up and continued its journey toward mount Sharp in the Gale Crater. On Wednesday, the rover finished transporting recently drilled material from it’s robotic arm to instruments on the rover’s body, before driving 33 feet on Thursday. The short circuit occurred on February 28th, and since then the mission team has been running tests to ensure everything was okay before resuming operations. The short circuit was caused by the percussive function of the rock drill on the rover’s robotic arm, and as the...
After reaching a deeper understanding of the subsurface ocean of Enceladus just yesterday, a stunning discovery has just been made about the largest Moon in the solar system. The largest moon of Jupiter, Ganymede, contains a subsurface ocean of it’s own. The discovery was made with the Hubble space telescope and a careful study of aurora on the giant moon. That’s right Ganymede has auroral activity. This is because it is the only moon in the solar system with a magnetic field. The magnetic field funnels radiation from the Sun toward the north and south poles, where it ionizes molecules...
Some of the moons of gas giant planets have a unique property: They are worlds that have a source of heat other than the Sun. The huge tidal forces imparted by their host planet and fellow moons cause their crust to grow and shrink, creating huge friction and heating the rock. It means that even if these moons are far from the warmth of the Sun, they can still host liquid water. There are two moons in our own solar system that are especially enticing: Jupiter’s second moon Europa, and the icy moon of Saturn known as Enceladus. Each host...
The science of Astronomy goes far beyond what humans can see with our eyes. The visible part of the spectrum has taught us so much, but when we look at all photons across the spectrum of light, we find exponentially more powerful methods for discovering the mysteries of the universe. Radio waves, yes the same ones that bring you music in your car, are found throughout the universe in very interesting environments. Radio waves often trace the most powerful objects in the universe, such as super-massive black holes, quasars, and other types of active galactic nuclei. Humans see visible light...
Even I was blown away when I saw this image a friend sent me. Gravitational lensing is a rare occurrence, and a supernova is a rare occurrence, so to see a supernova in a gravitationally lensed galaxy deep within the universe is exceptional. So exceptional that it was spotted for the first time ever in a Hubble image of the distant universe. That dot in the image is a single supernova in a very distant galaxy, split into four images by the gravitational lensing of the galaxy cluster in front of it. But there is also a secondary lensing effect from...
I love to discuss Mars rovers. The thought of robots roaming around the empty red desert, doing science in pure form, unmasking the surprising history of our red neighbour, it’s exciting and it’s the frontier of discovery. The limits of science and engineering are pushed as we send complex machines to travel further than any human in history. But with such a marvellous feat, issues can arise, and when they do, the nearest mechanic is 55 Million Km away. On February 27th, during the transfer of a sample of dust from the rover’s drill to its instruments, the rover suffered...
1,200 Km / s. That’s fast. Fast enough to race around the entire Earth in 30 seconds. Except that it’s not a bullet, it’s a star, larger and more massive than the Earth. And a multinational team of astronomers has discovered it, and more importantly, where it came from and why it’s moving so fast. Hypervelocity stars (HVS’) are an uncommon phenomenon, since the conditions necessary to accelerate them to incredible speeds are rare. There are only about 20 HVS known, and the first was found only ten years ago. So where do they come from? There are only a...
Mars has water. This statement was in question 15 years ago, but now it’s an accepted idea backed up by proof obtained by the last three Mars rovers. Not only does Mars have water now, but it had significantly more water in the past, as evidenced by the geological features seen throughout the planet. Ancient lake and river beds, water erosion, sedimentary rocks, all things that highlight once wet areas. How much water did Mars have? Where did it all go? A team of astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has been searching for answers, by looking...
